WINSTON-SALEM – The University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) has announced changes to its Spring Performance Calendar. Three previously announced Conductors Search Orchestra Concerts, on April 2, 9, and 16, have been replaced.

The calendar changes are:

Chamber Concert
Saturday, April 2, 2 p.m., Crawford Hall
This dynamic chamber concert will feature a mix of brass faculty and brass and percussion students. Faculty artist Matt Ransom, tuba, and faculty artist Judith Saxton, trumpet, will perform Eugene Anderson's "Baroque 'N Brass" for trumpet and tuba. Also, a graduate-level trumpet ensemble, fresh from their historic first trip (and the first-ever trip for UNCSA) to the semi-finals of the National Trumpet Competition, will perform their competition selection by Ronald Lo Presti, "Suite for Five Trumpets," along with a piece Saxton wrote about a former student, "Tribute for Maleah," a three-movement memoriam. Saxton will also be conducting the UNCSA Brass Ensemble in movements from "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Mussorgsky, arr. by Philip Jones. The student trombone quartet and percussion groups will also be heard.

UNCSA Symphony Orchestra and Cantata Singers Concert
Saturday, April 9, 2 p.m., Crawford Hall
The concert features composition faculty member Ken Frazelle’s work for chorus and orchestra, The Motion of Stone. Written in 1998, the work, with texts by A.R. Ammons, receives its North Carolina premiere. The concert also features Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4.

Composer-fest
Saturday, April 16, 2 p.m., Crawford Hall
Ever wonder how a composer makes his or her choices? Join four UNCSA composition students, Maestro James Allbritten, and the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra to find out. Each composer will discuss the compositional process, then premier a short work.  

Each of the three concerts offers free admission. For more information, contact the UNCSA  Box Office at 336-721-1945 or visit www.uncsa.edu/performances.

The Conductors Search Concerts were to have featured a guest conductor who was a finalist for the faculty position at UNCSA. School of Music Dean Wade Weast announced last October that Allbritten was appointed interim conductor. “His conducting will be supplemented by a guest conductor or two, which will provide our students with the much needed stability of a regular conductor as well as the perspective of an occasional guest,” Weast said.

UNCSA Chancellor John Mauceri will continue to conduct the orchestra on occasion, as his schedule allows, Weast added.

Allbritten is the artistic director of UNCSA’s A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, as well as the principal conductor and artistic director of Piedmont Opera Theatre.  

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from high school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. UNCSA is located at 1533 S. Main St., Winston-Salem. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

               

###